Catholics and Living History

The debate between the PRD and the Catholic Church in Mexico is a great example (probably just to history geeks) of why history matters so much. The debate itself is gripping, but the response of people reading about the debate interests me even more. Responses to a column in Excelsior called Catolico y perredista generated some great statements like this one from 1857 ... oops, 2010:

Los prelados mexicanos son los seres más hipócritas del mundo... se desgañitan por temas como este pero olímpicamente se hacen pendejos cuando sus curas pederastras y lenones depredan a muchachitos.

Or this one from 1934 (though the enviado de Vaticano part is a little off):

¿Asi es que el enviado del Vaticano quiere que solo existan catolicos y neocristero?

Or this one from El Universal and 1946:

Por favor, les pido que actuen de acuerdo a los "principios" que rigen al partido que yo pense era de izquierda. Respeten el apoyo de quienes votaron por ustedes y actuen. ¿Qué no quieren confrontaciones con la iglesia? Entonces ¿ella es la que gobierna al país?

My favorite was the second part of the "neo-cristero" post:

¿Ciento cincuenta años no les han enseñado nada a la curia romana en México?

The recourse to history - the ever present use of it - is an amazing thing for an historian to see. Americans rarely take such a path, often going only as deep as some non-contextual quote from Jefferson. I know that author Richard Rodriguez has often argued that culture is the constant Janus of Mexico's existence, simultaneously binding and lifting Mexicans as opposed to history. I would argue that history is so much part of Mexican culture in a way that it has ceased to be in the United States. Our history is a closet of skeletons and ghosts trotted out to intimidate opponents while in Mexico the calaveras of history's dead dance in the streets like a Posadas engraving. U.S. history comes with interpretive panels and talking heads - Mexican history is waking up in the morning and lying down at night. And I don't mean this as some sort of attempt to romanticize the use and abuse of history in Mexico, but I do mean to say that it seems to be ever present in Mexican discourse in a conscious way, as opposed to the unconscious way it appears in U.S. life.

Monumental Destruction

This week the Giraffes of Toluca died. Not the ones out at Zocango park, but the monument located on the road to DF called the Puerta Tolotzin that looked like the African animal. And, as Sol de Toluca reports, there wasn't an ounce of complaint about the removal, either. I had mentioned earlier that a bicentennial tower might be put up there, but that project seems on hold. Alexander Naime, however, gets props here for the best quote of the week in my book:

Toluca es una ciudad que se construye al capricho de quienes gobiernan y muy lejos de los intereses de los ciudadanos, muy lejos de su historia, muy lejos de los símbolos prácticamente borrados de la memoria colectiva.

I guess I can cut those three weeks out of my Mexico course that are post-1940 and just have the students read a translated version of that sentence.

One of the things I certainly appreciate about Mexico is the Roman near-madness for public monuments. The great Minerva and Arch in Guadalajara that illustrated the split personality of that city, the outlandish and striking revolutionary of Acatlan, the penitentes of Taxco, and of course, almost every square inch of DF. Public monuments give us a Mexico that simultaneously deigns to offer citizens a higher concept of community life while at times betraying that desire by covering for the lack of real improvements through lumps of brass and stone. My favorite monuments, however, are by far the glorietas. These islands of imposed and manufactured history are awash in a sea of racing modernization, but they are now so much part of the landscape and community that their original meaning is wrested from hands of their builders to become places of navigation, protest, hope, or resistance. So, while I appreciated Alexander Naime's complaint on the absence of a powerful monument outside of Toluca, perhaps he has missed what the "jirafas" of Tolotzin or the other monuments have meant to those not consumed with them as ideas of grand public art.

A Shot in the Arm for Chicano Studies?

Last night while doing dishes I heard that Eva Longoria Parker enrolled at Cal State Northridge for an MA in Chicano Studies. Well, I guess if CSUN needed a shot in the arm to raise enrollment, that might do it for me (though Mrs. Parker is taking the class on line).

There is an interesting discussion at the ForChicanoStudies Wiki about CSUN and Chicano studies, particularly an interesting discussion by a very famous Chicano Studies professor about the relationship at CSUN between Chicano Studies and history.

I've always had a tenuous relationship with Chicano Studies and the CS students. As a TA I often heard complaints from CS students about the history professors (three "Latino" and two "Anglos") and how they didn't teach the REAL history: Japanese envoys to the Aztec empire, Aztlan in south Texas or San Diego, Emiliano Zapata's power to speak with animals, unbroken lineages of Mexica shamans, etc. Living in family student housing we hung out with lots of CS students who refused to take history courses on Latin America because they felt history lacked a sense "struggle" or sympathy with the Chicano power movement. I suppose what really got my attention most was a young woman born in Honduras that was in one of my sections I was a TA for. She figuratively hit the wall during the section on early twentieth-century race and how she was tired of being (her words) "run over" by Chicano Studies students because she refused to self-identify as Chicano. She even recounted an ugly incident when she told another student she was "no damn Aztec and neither was he" since his last name was Pech and his family came from Merida. He did not take that well.

On the other hand, now that I am teaching my own courses in a place with no Chicano Studies, I really wish it was here so that the students would come with a stronger sense of identity.

Anyway, my experience is completely anecdotal and most certainly over-reaches, but my particular experience has left me with a couple thoughts. I think all-in-all history departments need to take Chicano history far more serious than they do - even the Latin Americanists. Teachers of US history most certainly need to, and World Historians could certainly find a fruitful area of comparison. On the other hand, CS needs to take Latin American history more seriously than they do at times, and broaden horizons beyond Mexico (and maybe Guatemala) and embrace study of the region as a whole - even beyond the more popular areas of art, literature, and music.

La Luz Del Mundo - Giving the People What they Want

Considering La Luz Del Mundo church in Guadalajara, Mexico is engaged in its largest religious festival of the year, my entries on the group have doubled traffic to the blog. I thought I could contribute something to the discussion of the highly controversial group by at least creating a basic info entry (as long as you all promise to still buy the book - hahaha). Anyway, it boggles my mind how this powerful and fast-growing institution has essentially been flying under the radar of Mexicanists for decades. However, as Schmidt points out in Fragments of a Golden Age, Mexican historians have hardly given religion in the modern period much of a look - let alone non-Catholic or non-traditional practice.

Founder: Eusebio Joaquin Gonzales. Eusebio joined the Iglesia Cristiana Espiritual in 1924 in Torreon (following his wife) and later became a disciple of barefoot self-proclaimed prophets Saulo and Silas. During this period Eusebio claimed a vision from god in which his name was changed to Aaron and he was charged with starting a "new dispensation" of time marking a new pact between God and man - essetially a restoration of primitive Christianity.

Major Moments in early LLDM history:
1) Eusebio's arrival in Guadalajara on the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1926 and his dedicatory prayer for that city. It sets up LLDM as directly in competition for not only spirituality but also mexicanidad.
2) 1930 Aaron introduces heirarchy into the previously loosely associated pentecostal church. Begins taking on the more formal structures of similar neo-pentecostal groups.
3) 1931 Santa Cena introduced. A formal celebration of the body and blood of Christ. Today members of LLDM gather on August 14th on the birthday of Aaron (about 250,000) in the Hermosa Provincia neighborhood of Guadalajara to take the sacrament of the holy supper: Another challenge to the ceremony of Catholicism. They also have competing ceremonies for newborn babies and watching over the dead.
4) 1933/34. LLDM begins forming their first community of LLDM members on Calle 46 in Guadalajara.
5) 1939. Growth and outside pressure move the group to build their second somewhat exclusive neighborhood.
6) 1942/43. A major schism within LLDM splits away hundreds of members of the group in central Mexico, but also leaves Aaron firmly in charge. He baptizes himself and is proclaimed an apostle of Jesus Christ.
7) 1953/54. LLDM purchases a hacienda east of Guadalajara and obtains an exception from the municipio to turn it into a development. The neighborhood is the famous Hermosa Provincia (named after the reference to Zion of Psalms 48). It becomes closely associated with the PRI through the FOPJ, or neighborhood organization associations of the ruling party.
8) 1964. Aaron dies and his son Samuel is proclaimed the new apostle. The church enters into an expansive phase of growth.

Thos are just a hand full of early highlights. The church claims 1.5 million members in Mexico (though only a fraction of that indicate such a denomination on the census). It also claims 5 million members globally. It has followers in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania in addition to the Americas.

The group has been both highly praised for literacy and poverty campaigns as well as highly controversial for centralized control, allegations of child abuse, improper use of funds, and possible tight links to the PRI.

Film, Cash, and Latin America - last call

I've put this up once before, but I see I'm getting some hits on this. So I will put it up again.

Call for Papers

The Latin American Studies Program at Stephen F. Austin State University, in conjunction with Clio’s Eye, a film and audio visual magazine for the historian produced by the Department of History at Stephen F. Austin State University, seek submissions of essays and reviews on films from or about Latin America or the portrayal of Latin America in film. The call for papers comes in conjunction with the April 2-4, 2009 conference of Latin American Studies scheduled to be held at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. http://www2.sfasu.edu/latinam/Home_.html

Submissions are accepted in English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese.

Graduate and undergraduate submissions are eligible for consideration for the Mary Devine prize of $250.

Contributors may submit essays about or reviews of films that introduce, review, evaluate, and promote discussion of film and literary works concerned with historical topics or themes to the public.

Authors who wish to submit materials may submit manuscripts to Dr. E. Deanne Malpass, Department of History, via email at malpasseliza@sfasu.edu or via CD to P.O. Box 13013, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas, 75962.

Please see http://clioseye.sfasu.edu/ (follow the Clio’s News link) for manuscript guidelines. Essay manuscripts should be no longer than approximately ten standard typed pages.

Deadline for submission: February 15, 2009.

Publication: April, 2009.

A Little Mad

Botanist Edgar Anderson wrote almost 50 years ago that botany was the prisoner of popularity and not the impulse to investigate areas that were grossly neglected.

I was thinking of this because a colleague asked me about a certain program well known for a particular area in Latin American history. He asked what the "head" of that cadre of specialists focused on as well as what his/her grad students wrote about. When I had to put in words that person's research as well as the grad student's writings I realized that they had all written the same book, only the blanks were different.

How this garbage keeps coming down the pipe as original contributions to the academy is beyond me. When I mentioned this at lunch to one of the deans here who knows the "head" of this cartel, his reply was that the wo/man throws great parties. Seriously. *sigh*

I'm not sure I can look my grad students in the face tomorrow night. Suckers.